View operating system details

---

This document describes how to set up and use OS inventory management. For an overview of OS inventory management, see OS inventory management.

Use OS inventory management to collect and view operating system details for your virtual machine (VM) instances. These operating system details include information such as hostname, operating system, and kernel version. You can also get information about installed OS packages, available OS package updates, and OS vulnerabilities. For a list of common scenarios for using OS inventory management, review When to use OS inventory management.

Before you begin

• Review OS Config quotas.
• Set up authentication.
  

  Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

  Console

  When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

  gcloud

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI, then initialize it by running the following command:

     gcloud init

     Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by running gcloud components update.
  2. Set a default region and zone.

  REST

  To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

  Install the Google Cloud CLI, then initialize it by running the following command:

  gcloud init

Supported operating systems

For the full list of operating systems and versions that support OS inventory management, see Operating system details.

Permissions

Owners of a Google Cloud project have full access to inventory data. For all other users, you need to grant permissions. You can grant one of the following granular roles:

• roles/osconfig.inventoryViewer: contains permissions to list and describe inventory data.
• roles/osconfig.vulnerabilityReportViewer: contains permissions to list and describe vulnerability report data.

Example command to set permissions

To grant a user access to view inventory data, use the following command:

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID \
    --member user:[e-mail] \
    --role roles/osconfig.inventoryViewer

Replace the following:

• PROJECT_ID: the project ID
• USER_ID: the user's Google Workspace username

Set up your VM

Before you can use OS inventory management, you need to configure your VMs to use the feature. To configure your VMs to use OS inventory management, set up VM Manager.

After setting up VM Manager on your VMs, you can then view OS inventory data and vulnerability reports.

View OS inventory data

• To view OS inventory data, use one of the following methods:

  • Use the Google Cloud console, gcloud CLI, or OS Config API
  • Use Cloud Asset Inventory

View OS inventory data for a VM

You can use the Google Cloud console, gcloud CLI or OS Config API to view OS information for a specific VM.

Console

To view OS vulnerabilities and information about installed packages on a VM by using the Google Cloud console, perform the following steps:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

   Go to VM instances

2. Click the name of the instance for which you want to view the OS information. The Instance details page appears.
3. Click the OS info tab.
   To view OS inventory data, you must enable VM Manager. If Google Cloud console prompts you to enable VM Manager, select one of the following options:
   • Enable for current project: enables VM Manager for all VMs in the selected project
   • Enable for this VM: enables VM Manager only for the selected VM
4. Review the list of OS vulnerabilities and installed packages in the OS info tab.
5. Optional: If updates are available for any of the installed packages, then select the package names and click Apply updates.
   The OS patch management page appears. For more information about using the OS patch management feature in VM Manager, see Create patch jobs.

gcloud

To view inventory details for a specific VM, run the os-config inventories describe command:

gcloud compute os-config inventories describe VM_NAME \
    --location=ZONE \
    --view=VIEW

Replace the following:

• VM_NAME: the name for your VM
• ZONE: the zone where the VM instance is located

• VIEW: the type of output information that is required. The following view types are available:

  • basic: displays only OS information

  • full: displays information about both OS and packages

    If unspecified, the default is basic.

  Example (basic view)

  gcloud compute os-config inventories describe vm1-centos \
     --location=us-central1-c
  

  Example output

  architecture: x86_64
  hostname: vm1-centos
  kernelRelease: 3.10.0-1160.92.1.el7.x86_64
  kernelVersion: '#1 SMP Tue Jun 20 11:48:01 UTC 2023'
  longName: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
  osconfigAgentVersion: 20230504.00-g1.el7
  shortName: centos
  updateTime: '2023-07-26T17:03:50Z'
  version: '7'
  

  Example (full view)

  gcloud compute os-config inventories describe vm1-centos \
     --location=us-central1-c \
     --view=full
  

  Linux example output

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                               Installed Packages (Yum)                              │
  ├─────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────────────────────┤
  │             PACKAGE_NAME            │ ARCHITECTURE │            VERSION             │
  ├─────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
  │ GeoIP                               │ x86_64       │ 1.5.0-13.el7                   │
  │ NetworkManager                      │ x86_64       │ 1:1.12.0-8.el7_6               │
  │ NetworkManager-libnm                │ x86_64       │ 1:1.12.0-8.el7_6               │
  │ NetworkManager-team                 │ x86_64       │ 1:1.12.0-8.el7_6               │
  │ NetworkManager-tui                  │ x86_64       │ 1:1.12.0-8.el7_6               │
  │ acl                                 │ x86_64       │ 2.2.51-14.el7                  │
  │ yum-cron                            │ all          │ 3.4.3-161.el7.centos           │
  │ yum-metadata-parser                 │ x86_64       │ 1.1.4-10.el7                   │
  │ yum-plugin-fastestmirror            │ all          │ 1.1.31-50.el7                  │
  │ zlib                                │ x86_64       │ 1.2.7-18.el7                   │
  └─────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                        Package Updates Available (Yum)                        │
  ├───────────────────────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────────────────────┤
  │          PACKAGE_NAME         │ ARCHITECTURE │            VERSION             │
  ├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
  │ GeoIP                         │ x86_64       │ 1.5.0-14.el7                   │
  │ NetworkManager                │ x86_64       │ 1:1.18.8-2.el7_9               │
  │ NetworkManager-libnm          │ x86_64       │ 1:1.18.8-2.el7_9               │
  │ NetworkManager-team           │ x86_64       │ 1:1.18.8-2.el7_9               │
  │ yum-cron                      │ all          │ 3.4.3-168.el7.centos           │
  │ yum-plugin-fastestmirror      │ all          │ 1.1.31-54.el7_8                │
  │ zlib                          │ x86_64       │ 1.2.7-19.el7_9                 │
  └───────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘
  architecture: x86_64
  hostname: vm1-centos
  kernelRelease: 3.10.0-957.1.3.el7.x86_64
  kernelVersion: '#1 SMP Thu Nov 29 14:49:43 UTC 2018'
  longName: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
  osconfigAgentVersion: 20230504.00-g1.el7
  shortName: centos
  updateTime: '2021-05-11T22:21:52.323Z'
  version: '7'
  

  Windows example output

  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                Installed Packages (GooGet)                │
  ├───────────────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────────┤
  │      PACKAGE_NAME     │ ARCHITECTURE │      VERSION       │
  ├───────────────────────┼──────────────┼────────────────────┤
  │ google-osconfig-agent │ x86_64       │ 20210415.4.0+win@1 │
  └───────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │     Installed Packages (Windows Update Agent)     │
  ├───────┬────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────┤
  │ TITLE │ CATEGORIES │ KB_ARTICLE_IDS │ SUPPORT_URL │
  ├───────┼────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────┤
  │ title │ C1, C2     │ 4589208        │ url.com     │
  └───────┴────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │           Installed Packages (Quick Fix Engineering)          │
  ├─────────┬─────────────────┬────────────┬──────────────────────┤
  │ CAPTION │   DESCRIPTION   │ HOT_FIX_ID │     INSTALL_TIME     │
  ├─────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────┤
  │ caption │ Security Update │ KB4470788  │ 2019-03-12T00:00:00Z │
  └─────────┴─────────────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │                  Installed Packages (Windows Application)                 │
  ├──────────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────────────┬──────────────┤
  │   DISPLAY_NAME   │ DISPLAY_VERSION │       PUBLISHER       │ INSTALL_DATE │
  ├──────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────┤
  │ PowerShell 7-x64 │ 7.0.2.0         │ Microsoft Corporation │ 2021-06-08   │
  └──────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────────────┴──────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │             Package Updates Available (GooGet)            │
  ├───────────────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────────┤
  │      PACKAGE_NAME     │ ARCHITECTURE │      VERSION       │
  ├───────────────────────┼──────────────┼────────────────────┤
  │ google-osconfig-agent │ x86_64       │ 20210415.4.0+win@1 │
  └───────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  Package Updates Available (Windows Update Agent) │
  ├───────┬────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────┤
  │ TITLE │ CATEGORIES │ KB_ARTICLE_IDS │ SUPPORT_URL │
  ├───────┼────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────┤
  │ title │ C1, C2     │ 4589208        │ url.com     │
  └───────┴────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────┘
  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │       Package Updates Available (Quick Fix Engineering)       │
  ├─────────┬─────────────────┬────────────┬──────────────────────┤
  │ CAPTION │   DESCRIPTION   │ HOT_FIX_ID │     INSTALL_TIME     │
  ├─────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────┤
  │ caption │ Security Update │ KB4470788  │ 2019-03-12T00:00:00Z │
  └─────────┴─────────────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────┘
  architecture: x86_64
  hostname: vm3-windows
  kernelRelease: 10.0.17763.1817
  kernelVersion: 10.0.17763.1817 (WinBuild.160101.0800)
  longName: Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter
  osconfigAgentVersion: 20210901.00.0+win@1
  shortName: windows
  updateTime: '2021-09-12T22:14:35Z'
  version: 10.0.17763
  

REST

To view inventory details for a specific VM, create a GET request to the projects.locations.instances.inventories.get method.

   GET https://osconfig.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE/inventory
   

Replace the following:

• PROJECT_ID: your project ID
• ZONE: the zone where the VM instance is located
• INSTANCE: specify either the instance ID or the name for your VM

View OS inventory data for VMs in a specific zone

You can use gcloud CLI or OS Config API to view the OS information for VMs in a specific zone.

gcloud

To view a list of inventory data for VMs in a specific zone, run the os-config inventories list command.

gcloud compute os-config inventories list \
    --location=ZONE \
    --view=VIEW

Replace the following:

• ZONE: the zone where the VM is located

• VIEW: the type of output information that is required. The following view types are available:

  • basic: displays only OS information

  • full: displays information about both OS and packages

    If unspecified, the default is basic.

  Example (basic view)

  gcloud compute os-config inventories list \
     --location=us-central1-c
  

  The output is similar to the following:

  INSTANCE_ID          INSTANCE_NAME     OS                                         OSCONFIG_AGENT_VERSION       UPDATE_TIME
  29255009728795105    vm1-centos        CentOS Linux 7 (Core)                      20230504.00-g1.el7           2023-07-26T16:53:49Z
  5138980234596718741  vm2-rhel8         Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 (Ootpa)       20230504.00-g1.el8           2023-07-26T16:55:33Z
  7127836223366142250  vm3-windows       Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Datacenter   20230403.00.0+win@1          2023-07-26T16:49:16Z
  

  Example (full view)

  gcloud compute os-config inventories list \
     --location=us-central1-c \
     --view=full
  

  The output is similar to the following:

  INSTANCE_ID          INSTANCE_NAME     OS                                       INSTALLED_PACKAGES   AVAILABLE_PACKAGES  OSCONFIG_AGENT_VERSION       UPDATE_TIME
  29255009728795105    vm1-centos        CentOS Linux 7 (Core)                    334                    2                 20230504.00-g1.el7           2023-07-26T16:53:49Z
  5932621394110773366  vm2-rhel8         Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 (Ootpa)     410                  138                 20230504.00-g1.el8           2023-07-26T16:55:33Z
  7127836223366142250  vm3-windows       Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Datacenter  36                    6                 20230403.00.0+win@1          2023-07-26T16:49:16Z
  

REST

To view a list of inventory data for VMs in a specific zone, create a GET request to the projects.locations.instances.inventories.list method.

   GET https://osconfig.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/ZONE/instances/–/inventories
   

Replace the following:

• PROJECT_ID: your project ID
• ZONE: the zone where the OS policy assignments are located

View OS inventory data from Cloud Asset Inventory

OS inventory management stores and forwards inventory and vulnerability report data to Cloud Asset Inventory. Cloud Asset Inventory is a metadata inventory service that allows you to view, monitor, and analyze assets across Google Cloud. From Cloud Asset Inventory, you can poll the information and view changes in the data.

To access OS inventory and vulnerability report data from Cloud Asset Inventory, you need to complete the following setup:

• Set up VM Manager.
• On your Google Cloud project, enable the Cloud Asset Inventory API, the Google Cloud CLI, and assign permissions.

For more information, see Viewing VM Manager data.

View vulnerability reports

Software vulnerabilities are weaknesses that can either cause an accidental system failure or result in malicious activity. For more information, see Vulnerability reports.

To view vulnerability report data, you can use any of the following options:

• Use the gcloud CLI or API
• If you are a Security Command Center premium tier user, use the Security Command Center dashboard
• Use Cloud Asset Inventory

Note: Vulnerability reports are not available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Windows operating systems.

View vulnerability report using the gcloud CLI or API

gcloud

1. To view vulnerability reports for VMs in a specific zone, use the os-config vulnerability-reports list command.

   For example, to list all the VMs that have inventory data, run the following command:

   gcloud compute os-config vulnerability-reports list \
      --location=ZONE
   

   Replace ZONE with the zone where the VM is located.

   Example

   gcloud compute os-config vulnerability-reports list \
      --location=us-west2-a
   

   The output is similar to the following:

   INSTANCE_ID         VULNERABILITY_COUNT  UPDATE_TIME
   29255009728795105   2                    2021-04-13T19:10:10.303046Z
   307058717116242358  1                    2021-04-13T19:10:10.303046Z
   

2. To view vulnerability report for a specific VM, run the os-config vulnerability-reports describe command specifying the INSTANCE_ID returned from the previous step or the INSTANCE_NAME.

   gcloud compute os-config vulnerability-reports describe INSTANCE_NAME \
      --location=ZONE
   

   Replace the following:

   • INSTANCE_NAME: the name for your VM
   • ZONE: the zone where the VM instance is located

   Example

   gcloud compute os-config vulnerability-reports describe vm1-centos \
      --location=us-west2-a
   

   Example output

   ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │                          Vulnerabilities                          │
   ├──────────────────┬──────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────────┤
   │       CVE        │ SEVERITY │ CVSS_V3_SCORE │     CREATE_TIME     │
   ├──────────────────┼──────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────┤
   │ CVE-2012-6655    │ LOW      │ 3.3           │ 2021-04-29T22:19:53 │
   │ CVE-2016-1585    │ MEDIUM   │ 9.8           │ 2021-04-29T22:19:53 │
   │ CVE-2016-2781    │ LOW      │ 6.5           │ 2021-04-29T22:19:53 │
   │ CVE-2019-7306    │ LOW      │ 7.5           │ 2021-04-29T22:19:53 │
   │ CVE-2020-13776   │ LOW      │ 6.7           │ 2021-04-29T22:19:53 │
   │ CVE-2021-31879   │ MEDIUM   │ 6.1           │ 2021-05-05T06:11:53 │
   └──────────────────┴──────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────┘
   name: projects/384587888288/locations/us-west2-a/instances/29255009728795105/vulnerabilityReport
   updateTime: '2021-05-11T22:29:50'
   

REST

1. To view vulnerability reports for VMs in a specific zone, create a GET request to the projects.locations.instances.vulnerabilityReports method.

   GET https://osconfig.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/ZONE/instances/–/vulnerabilityReports
   

   Replace the following:

   • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
   • ZONE: the zone where the OS policy assignments are located

2. To view vulnerability report for a specific VM, create a GET request to the projects.locations.instances.getVulnerabilityReport method.

   GET https://osconfig.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/ZONE/instances/INSTANCE/vulnerabilityReport
   

   Replace the following:

   • PROJECT_ID: your project ID
   • ZONE: the zone where the VM instance is located
   • INSTANCE: specify either the instance ID or the name for your VM

View vulnerability reports using the Security Command Center dashboard

Preview

This feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms. Pre-GA features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

Security Command Center is Google Cloud's centralized vulnerability and threat reporting service.

If you are a Security Command Center premium tier user, you can access vulnerability report data for the operating systems that are running on VMs across your organization.

From the Findings tab in the Security Command Center dashboard, you can review the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) IDs for all identified vulnerabilities that are affecting your operating system.

For information about using the Security Command Center dashboard to access and review operating system vulnerability data, see VM Manager.

View vulnerability reports data from Cloud Asset Inventory

OS inventory management stores and forwards inventory and vulnerability report data to Cloud Asset Inventory. Cloud Asset Inventory is a metadata inventory service that allows you to view, monitor, and analyze assets across Google Cloud. From Cloud Asset Inventory, you can poll the information and view changes in the data.

To access OS inventory and vulnerability report data from Cloud Asset Inventory, you need to complete the following setup:

• Set up VM Manager.
• On your Google Cloud project, enable the Cloud Asset Inventory API, the Google Cloud CLI, and assign permissions.

For more information, see Viewing VM Manager data.

OS inventory management (earlier version)

If you are still using the earlier version of OS inventory management, expand the following section to review the instructions for the Google Cloud CLI.

OS inventory management (earlier version)

List VMs

To view the list of VMs that have OS inventory management set up, run the instances os-inventory list-instances command.

For example, to list all the VMs that have inventory data, run the following command:

gcloud compute instances os-inventory list-instances

The output is similar to the following:

  NAME                 ZONE          MACHINE_TYPE   PREEMPTIBLE  INTERNAL_IP  EXTERNAL_IP STATUS
  inventory-instance   us-east1-b    e2-standard-2               192.0.2.1    RUNNING
  instance-inventory1  us-west1-b    e2-standard-2               192.0.2.2    RUNNING
  instance-inventory2  asia-east2-b  e2-standard-2               192.0.2.3    RUNNING
  

You can also use filters to narrow down your results. For example, you can list all VMs that have OS inventory management set up and whose hostname matches the regex instance-* by running the following command:

gcloud compute instances os-inventory list-instances
      --inventory-filter="Hostname~instance-*"

The output is similar to the following:

  NAME                 ZONE         MACHINE_TYPE   PREEMPTIBLE  INTERNAL_IP  EXTERNAL_IP STATUS
  inventory-instance   us-east1-b   e2-standard-2               192.0.2.1    RUNNING
  instance-inventory1  us-west1-b   e2-standard-2               192.0.2.2    RUNNING
  instance-inventory2  asia-east2-b e2-standard-2               192.0.2.3    RUNNING
  

View inventory data

To view the inventory data for your VM, use the instances os-inventory describe command.

To view the inventory data collected for a VM, run the following command:

gcloud compute instances os-inventory describe VM_NAME \
      --zone=ZONE

Replace the following:

• VM_NAME: the name of your VM
• ZONE: the zone where the VM is located

To view the types of output details that are returned, review Information provided by OS inventory management.

What's next

• Learn more about OS inventory management.